


Blood and salt

by Kit



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Act 2, Act 3, Competence Porn, Dread Pirate Merrill, F/F, Hawke is an arse, Lady Pirates, rescue tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-08-13 14:26:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7979980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke makes choices all the time. Surrendering Isabela to the Arishok was a choice. Handing Fenris to Denarius was a choice. </p><p>Merrill makes a choice to get them back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChocoChipBiscuit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/gifts).



**9:34 Dragon - Kirkwall**

Some days, Merrill does not leave her house. It’s very easy, with pieces of the eluvian about her, _almost_ making patterns; the lore in her head nearly making sense. Her room is thick with dust and dead flowers, her mug close by and her plates clean because eating is bodied and complicated and when she is just a little bit giddy some of the patterns she needs begin to fit, the world ringing and clear.

Today, she did leave. Her head is full of Lowtown’s markets, her skin damp with rain and the weight of her purchases cutting red lines into her palms to match Varric’s string. He’d gone with her, kind and quick-talking, saying she needed air and food as much as any other daisy.

He does that, she thinks. Checks on people, even when it means sneaking into the Gallows to see Bethany, or walking from one end of the Hanged Man to the other so that Fenris and Anders can complain about each other in different spaces.

“Everything’s a mess,” he’d said to her today. “Doesn’t mean you have to get lost.”

“I’m not lost,” she’d told him. “Just busy. Are you lost?”

“I—“

“—Is this about Hawke, Varric? Has she started with you, too?”

His smile had tilted, the gold at his chest painting small, flicker-shadows against his skin. “Started what, Daisy?”

“...being _Hawke_ , I suppose.”   

He had laughed. There’d been sighing in it, and then smoke and drums. A shift in the crowd that made him say _oh, shit_ , and: “Are you coming?” followed right up by: “no, don’t. I’ll find Hawke,” that made her want to kick him in the shins. Just a little.

Hawke only asks for Merrill’s help when Anders is too tired for magic. And the shopping should be put away.

Varric had left her at her door. And now Isabela is in her room.

This is strange. Isabela shouldn’t be any rooms. Ships have berths, instead. Merrill remembers that. The tangle of new words she learned crossing from Ferelden into Kirkwall in boats that stank and rocked and turned half the clan green. They’d two berths between them all, and—

\-- _Creators_. What did that matter? Isabela stands before her, thick shards from her one window glinting sadly about her feet. Merrill’s groceries are there too. She doesn’t remember dropping the basket.

“I’m normally a better housebreaker,” she says. “Blasted book threw out my balance.”

Merrill blinks. Isabela holds a book under one arm, half wrapped in sacking. Bright colours show through. Orange. A sky blue she has never in ink. The script isn’t in Trade, isn’t anything elvhen.

“What is that thing?”

Not the words Merrill wants to ask, though it feels like there’s a little bit of “ _where were you?”_ and “ _are you safe_?” shaking in in the corners.

“Something I don’t want any more.” Isabela says. “It’s not worth the trouble.”

Merrill swallows. “What trouble?”

“ _All_ my trouble.”

“So…you’ve come back?”  Merrill steps forward. There’s glass under her bare feet, harder to see than her bruised fruit and flatbread, but it’s still far too thick to cut. She doesn’t know why Isabela makes a face. No matter. She steps. She reaches. Isabela’s free hand catches hers.

“I missed you,” Merrill says. “I know you haven’t been gone long, of course, but I thought you _were_. Everyone does. Hawke was furious.” A pause. “More furious.”

Isabela rolls her eyes. “Of course she was. It’ll be even worse once I get her arse out of this mess. I should be there now. I was just going, but I wanted—” she shakes her head.  

“You wanted?” Merrill swallows. There’s something special about that word, sometimes. It fits in her mouth like a secret and Isabela’s eyes are bright in her tired, grimy face. She speaks secrets.

“I always want, kitten.”

“ _I_ wanted,” Merrill says. She fizzes with it; her fingers slide up on the inside of Isabela’s wrist. “To see you again, I mean. I always—I—me too, I mean.” _Elgar’nan._  

A slow smile. A tiny huff of laughter that licks up into all the spaces Merrill has left.  “I wasn’t even sure you’d be here, kitten. I thought you might be with Hawke. There’s a huge bit of mess, and I need—well. I can clean it up. Just this once.”

“Hawke…doesn’t take me places,” Merrill says. “Not often. She’s still cranky I threw her out of the house.”

“You _did_?” her eyes grow wide. “Where was I?”

“I have no idea.”

Isabela sighs gustily. “Well,” she says. “When I get back, you _have_ to tell me. Every bit.”

Merrill smiles. “You’re coming back?”

Isabela’s hair tickles her cheek as she leans down, lips brushing Merrill’s forehead. “For you, kitten? I’ll even promise.”  The smuggled book digs into Merrill’s side.

“Good,” Merrill says.  She lifts her chin, flushing as the space between them shrinks with every breath they both take.  “And you didn’t need to break in, Isabela. The lock doesn’t work very well. I _liked_ that window.”

Isabela doesn’t say anything. But that’s all right. She’s not the sort to make promises twice. Merrill pulls away, but she kisses her own fingertips, watches in delight as something soft and wondering uncurls in the new smile she feels when she brushes them against Isabela’s lips.

Isabela nods. Just once, and walks away.

* * *

 

At the end of the day, the Qunari are gone. There is a clamour as they leave Kirkwall, the alienage milling as people come in from the docks full of stories about dead shem and shouting.

“Your boss,” a child says to Merrill as she joins them. She can’t remember his name, which is poor of her. As bad as the whispered _Dalish_ or _witch_ that follows her about.

_I am not a very good First._

The thought is familiar, slipping through even as he talks and she catches on the word _boss_ with confusion. “I’m sorry?”

“Your Hawke,” he says. “She made ‘em go away.”

“Oh,” Merrill says. She remembers Varric’s face. The smoke. Isabela’s talk of messes. Isabela.

(“ _When I get back_ …”)  

* * *

 

Merrill visits the Hanged Man. Stickiness and warmth. Old beer and older straw. Varric in his chair and Hawke leaning near it, smile hot and hectic, dangerous as melting glass.

“Merrill!” she says. “I’m a _Champion_.”

Merrill swallows. She can see Anders, eyes safely warm and brown. He looks less tired than usual. His face is tilted up to Hawke’s, while Fenris is scowling at cracks in the table. There’s Aveline, too. She looks very strange. Pale, chin set. Freckles stand out like blood on her cheeks.  

“Oh? What’s that?” Merrill asks.

Hawke laughs. “Me.”

Merrill watches Fenris curl his llp. She isn’t sure if he’s more exasperated, or amused.  

“Reductive,” he says.

“I—“ Merrill swallows. “Is it because of the Qunari?” she asks. “I heard you did something.”

“ _Did_ something?” Hawke takes a pull at her glass, throat working. “I sorted it out. Before Meredith could get antsy. They’re gone.” She shakes her head. “I am _never_ going to understand religion,” she says. “Yours, Merrill. My mother’s. The Qun. Four years here, all because of a book.”

“A sacred book,” Fenris mutters.

“”Well, they’ve got it back and I wish them joy,” Hawke says, leaning down at letting her hand fall to the table near his. “Far, far-away joy.”

“And Isabela with them?” Aveline. The words were edged. Muscles tick in her jaw and neck as sweat starts up in the small of Merrill’s back. The inside of her elbows. Her palms. She watches as Hawke finishes her drink. Watches Varric wince and Anders sigh and Fenris make another one of those noises that say anger and a whole roiling lot of other mess beneath it.

She watches.

“Please stop, Aveline,” Hawke says. “I did what I could with what was in front of me.”

“She was in front of you.” Aveline snorts. “Trusting you, too.”

“Hawke?” The name is hard. Merrill tries it again. “Hawke, what—“

“Maker. I don’t know why you’re the one who’s upset about this,” Hawke says. The words fly past Merrill, aimed at Aveline’s scowl. “You’re at each other’s throats.”

“I told you.” Aveline folds her arms. “If anyone’s going to kick her ass, it should be me.”

“So I should have refused?” Raised eyebrows and a laugh that makes Merrill’s toes curl against the floor, her skin feel far too big for her body. “Defended her, after all that dance? That’s leaving room for a lot more death, just because she was—“

“— _What_ was she, Hawke?” a pause. “Yours? That’s…unsettling.”

 “ _Hawke_.” Merrill isn’t very good at shouting. Something splits in every voice every time, and she must look like she’s crying because people always make soothing noises, even when she’s telling them to watch out for traps, or a spider as big as her head is ready to take bits of out of their arm. Still, she manages it.  Ragged and wild, with silence for its shadow.

At least Hawke never makes noises.

“What did you do?” Merrill asks. “Where is Isabela?”

Hawke tells her.

Some days, Merrill does not leave her house. She imagines herself back there, the words unheard, her floor littered with glass. She imagines gathering it up. Filling hours with cleaning. She would, she thinks, take extra care. Wiping and dusting and putting a new leg on her chair so it stops tipping every time someone uses it. She’d cover the eluvian in its sheet, just this once. She’d have time.

Merrill imagines herself home, filling hours that would stretch out as she waited for Isabela to keep her promise. It would hurt, because Isabela couldn’t keep it, but at least Merrill wouldn’t _know_. Wouldn’t look at Hawke and see indifference.

“She’s escaped before,” Hawke says. “I’m sure she’ll do it again. Eventually.”

“Eventually?”

Hawke smiles. “Just to spite me,” she says. “If she stabs me in the kidney later, you can argue that I deserve it.” She shrugs, expression softening. “I know you like her, Merrill. I’m sorry. But it was her choice to come back, and mine to do this.”

“I can see that,” Merrill says. She’s counting in her head. The rhythm helps. Her breathing is steady.

Hawke’s smile brightens again. Her broad smile. Her bar fight smile.  Her “follow me and don’t be an ass” smile.   

“And you know,” Hawke says, “It is _lovely_ to say that something is just not my problem. I never get to say that.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coins and contingency plans, Uncertain friendships and new futures. Hawke is Hawke. Merrill learns what that means.

**9:37 Dragon**

 

 _Dear Isabela_ , Merrill does not write.

_You’ve escaped, haven’t you? I’m sure you could. I asked Varric and he agrees. Two days, he says. ‘Give Isabela two days and she’ll be over the side with the captain’s hat.’_

She does not write. She finds. She watches Hawke’s fingers on the bodies she leaves behind, and takes the gold the other woman so often forgets, distracted by moth-eaten scarves and bent spoons and other things that make her clink as she walks. Hawke will take anything, if she thinks about it. Says it comes from a fear of nothing, and Merrill believes her.

“Do you mean you’re not afraid of _anything_ , or is it nothingness that’s frightening?” she asks, once.

“Shut up, Merrill.”

Merrill shrugs and fits gold up her sleeve.

Fenris notices. Days bleed into a year, and he watches her when Hawke is three steps ahead and Varric two behind, until he bends down one night and picks up a dull coin. He drops into her hand.

“You have missed one,” he says. He sneers, too, because his mouth is good at it (and, Merrill thinks, because there is ground beneath the sky, and rain is still made of water) but there is something curious his expression. His eyes are narrowed, but they are not hard.

“Thank you,” she says.  “They’re really very useful. Did you know?”

Merrill is unsure how to read his face. They have been fighting (they are always fighting). The blood of seven Silent Sisters grows thick and cold on the street, the power in it spilled and dull, nearly gone. His sword is clean and strapped away, the shadow of his ramshackle home reaching out to greet them. The one unlit house in Hightown. 

“Don’t mock me,” he says.

“I wasn’t! Not—oh.” Her own mouth twists. “By the Dread Wolf, you are impossible. Thank you.”

“What shall you use it for?” he asks, when she is half a street away from him and writing to Isabela in her head. “Your treasury?”

“Expensive things,” she tells him. “What would you use it for?”

“You think I have use for coin?”

Half a smile in that. Not the warm sort, but his eyes meet hers. Two beats of it, before they slide to just past her shoulder. Merrill keeps her own eyes on his jaw, his temple. 

“Why wouldn’t you? Hawke isn’t very good at paying people, is she? And you go on more missions than I do. She _likes_ you.” A pause.  “Are they missions? The word feels very adventurous, and this is always rather ordinary. Bloody. But like errands. With knives in them.”

Fenris laughs. Quick. Startled. “She…is singular,” he says. “And you—“he shakes his head. “No matter. Keep your plans, mage.”

“Nothing magical about these,” Merrill says, drawing the coin out from her purse and holding it up in the firelight from a mansion’s window.  

“Put that away before someone tries to rob you,” Fenris mutters.

 _Dear Isabela_ , Merrill does not write. _You were right. Fenris is quite nice. Sometimes. When he’s not too tired. No one is nice when they’re tired, are they? I wish I knew if you were all right. I wish—I’m_ trying _—I’m saving. I’m not very good at it._

* * *

 

“You are a fool,” he tells her. This is not unusual. Merrill would not be bothered with her skin did not hurt. If her joints didn’t feel strung together on the hot wires she has tried to craft for the Eluvian. She wouldn’t mind, if she’d hit him with her staff because all the lyrium in his body made her dizzy if she wasn’t careful, or if she got the drink orders wrong at the Hanged Man for the third time in a week. 

But now there are glass splinters under her nails and she sees Pol when she sleeps. He is dead-eyed and Fenris is dead certain, and Merrill does not know how to breathe between them both.  

“Very likely,” she says. “You’ve called me worse.”

 _Monstrous._ He has called her that with a face covered in blood and the Varteral’s body gone to sticks and scraps between them, while Hawke gathered up her knives and muttered about waste. “I’m not giving you that damn tool,” Hawke had said, while Fenris looked at the dead boy and told Merrill he knew why Pol had run.

Now, he shifts under her glare. His feet stick to the floor of the Hanged Man. “I…would apologise,” he says. “If you’ll allow it.”

“For calling me a fool?” Merrill asks. “I don’t see why, You’ll only do it again.”

“For—“ his face scrunches up. It’s almost interesting. “You are no more monstrous than any of us, I think.”

“That’s thoughtful of you.”

“ _Merrill_.”

It is, she thinks, one of the few times he’s ever said her name.

Well. Growled it.

“I’m tired, Fenris,” she says. “I don’t mind if you apologise later or now, really, though it is very nice. I suppose.”

“I’ll—“ Fenris sighs. “I will go with you, if you want. When you need up the mountain ag— _phwah_. What was that?”

Merrill blows on his face.

“I wanted to see if it stuck,” Merrill said. “That scowl.”

 _Dear Isabela,_ Merrill does not write. _I miss you._

* * *

She finds a book on the way home from another night dealing with street gangs on Hawke’s behalf. Anders left at the clinic, but Fenris is still at her back, and watches as she bends to retrieve the worn thing, tucked behind a barrel and miraculously dry. “She traces the first S with a fingertip, and smiles in slow recognition. “Oh, she says. “Have you read this?”

“No,” says Fenris.  

“Would you like to? It’s really quite good.”

“It is—“

“Here.” Merrill presses it into his hands. “It’s about Shartan. He helped Andraste free slaves. Not all of them, but quite a lot.”

Fenris looks like he wants to throw the book into the street. He picks up half a brick, and hurls it instead. Sleeping pigeons make affronted noises, the air growing thick with wings until the the two of them shudder.

“You do not even believe in the woman,” Fenris says.

“The woman?” Merrill shrugs. “She’s perfectly real. I just don’t think she married a god. Gods are bad enough at marrying each other, don’t you think?”

 “I—“

Merrill waits.

“I know of Shartan,” he says, slow, eyes steadier on her face than she is used to, through all their sniping. “But slaves are not permitted to read.” Half a smile. No humour. “I never learned.”

“You could start,” Merrill says. “I’ve taught lots of people.”

“Children,” he mutters.

“Not always. And _people_. Just people.”

He runs his own fingers over the worn, embossed lettering. “Perhaps I shall start,” he says. “And by the time you escape your mirror I might surprise you.”

He is still smiling. Easy to say it’s a trick of the light, except that there’s hardly any of that between them. They stand amid refuse and old crates and ruffled pigeons, and he is still smiling at her.

She laughs. Surprised and stung and a little delighted.

“I like surprises,” she says.  “Mostly”

* * *

 

“Keeper, what did you _do_?”

Fenris is on Sundermount when Merrill sees her demon wearing Marethari’s skin. He is there when she dies, her body nothing more than a broken casing, the Fade rippling and splitting and reluctant to take the creature back into itself. He is there when she cries. When Hawke, face scratched and eyes blazing, says that there will be no more fighting. That they are all done.

 _Shut up, Merrill_.

Hawke stands before the remnants of Merrill’s people. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll make sure Merrill doesn’t harm anyone with her blood magic again.”

 _I had to ask you for three months before you came up here, Hawke._ Merrill thinks. And a voice that sounds a little bit like Isabela adds: _and I’d like to see you try_. But the thoughts don’t stick. They prick her, then skitter away. She feels the clan’s eyes on her back all the way down the mountain, Marethari’s name tripping up her heartbeat.

Hawke does not shout at her. She doesn’t speak. Just shakes her head as Merrill finds her door, walks away while Merrill’s back is turned.

 _Dear Isabela_ , she does not write. _I don’t_ —

The mirror breaks. Easier than breath. Six years of work done in a scream and splinters, her eyes hot and dry.

He does not embrace her. He picks up larger fragments of glass from her floor, and hands to her so she can shatter them again.

* * *

“It really is you.”

“ _Varania_?”

The next time Merrill joins Hawke at The Hanged Man, the world is different. It is too quiet, even with morning light scaring most of Corf’s customers deeper into their beds. An elf with bright hair and a lip bitten near through sits at one of the tables, wringing her hands. Her shoulders are hunched in a way that makes memory ache like a bad tooth. Varric looks between the two of them as if he needs a pen.  

Merrill can hear Fenris breathe from where she stands. Slow, as if he needs time to tell his lungs what to do for each tiny movement.

“Is everything all right, Hawke?” she asks. Fenris won’t hear her if she tries him, Merrill is sure. Hawke’s eyes are narrowed, lips thin.

“Shut up, Merrill,” she says.

“I—“

Varric stiffens. “Things aren’t quite right here, chuckles. I think—“

“This,” Hawke says, as the elven woman raises her head and says a name that makes Fenris go white about the lips, “is a trap.”

Fenris does not talk about Denarius. Not with Merrill. Not with anyone, she’s sure. Merrill can think of all sorts for him, as he moves through the room with clear eyes and the sort of voice that turns Fenris’s name in to something acid about its edges, but they stick in her throat.  

“You led him here,” Fenris says to the elven woman, while Merrill fights bile and Varric shifts Bianca from his back. “You—“

“—now, now. Don’t blame your sister,” Denarius says. His smile is warm. He gives Hawke a little nod of the head.

 _Hawke. Hawke, **do something**_ **.** _Mythal protect and—_

—If Varric cuts him, Merrill thinks, she can use his blood. He’ll look at her like the world does, not expect his pulse to shift because of her magic. Not know that she’s leeched the heat and power from him until he’s too tired and shocked to do more than gape at her. She has used blood magic to kill, but never killed _with it_. There is a difference, and it frightens her. It’ll stick, she thinks. It’ll twine in all about with the living, tangled mess of her and if Hawke doesn’t talk soon, she might risk it. Anything to stop the smile and Fenris’s horror and the wetness she can feel gathering in the small of her back, the crooks of her elbows. They all reek of fear sweat and Denarius looks like he’s going to sing.

“And this is your new mistress, then? The Champion of Kirkwall. Quite lovely.”  

 Hawke is smiling. Her shoulders relax, looking from the magister to Varania and back again.  She looks at Fenris. He catches her eye, and Merrill can see her lips part, watches her throat work.

She’ll spit, Merrill hopes. She’ll spit and fight and they’ll have to clean up the bar afterwards, because Corf likes broken things even less than he likes corpses, but—

“—if you want him, he’s yours,” Hawke says.

“What?”

“I’m not fighting this man,” Hawke says. “Like this?” her gesture takes them all in, while Fenris makes a low, bruised sort of noise that shouldn’t come from anyone, which Merrill feels through her spine, the soles of her feet.

_Was this how Isabela felt?_

“No,” Merrill breathes. “Please, tell me you’re not doing this.” She wasn’t at the Arishok fight. She will never know who pleaded for her friend, if anyone. She does not know if Isabela was overcome, or if she spat and struck and did all the things Merrill’s body can’t do now. She can only stare, while—“

“—shut up, Merrill.”

“Hawke,” Fenris says. Each word is distinct. “Do not do this. I need you.”

Hawke sighs. “I’m sorry Fenris,” she says, while Denarius smiles. “You’re on your own.”

_Shut up, Hawke._

* * *

There was more. There is always more, but Merrill can only think of it sideways. If she looks at it straight on, she’ll start shaking. She is uncertain. Hollow. Like the times her reflection shifted in the Eluvian, thinning and fraying as she worked until she was sure that if she touched her own face, she’d only find cobwebs.  She needs to be solid, now. Solid enough to take all the coin she’s found in this city. Solid enough to take it to one of Isabela’s Sams.

  _(“I know a lot of people called_ _Sam,_ ” Isabela said once, the fifth time a story got tangled up over cards and who was sleeping with whom. “ _It’s a very…people sort of name, kitten_ ”)

Now, Merrill knows lots of humans called Sam. Nice ones. Stupid ones. Smart ones. Tricky ones. Ones with boats that are broken enough to be sold, but sound enough, she is _almost_ sure, to get her to a new port for repairs. If she’s lucky. Sams who know other Sams.

 _This,_ Merrill thinks, _is a frightening idea_.

She does not care.

 _Dear Isabela,_ she does not write. _I’m going to find you. And Fenris._

_I wonder if Hawke will notice? I’m sorry if I drown._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isabela duels.

**9: 34 Dragon - The Wounded Coast**

The Arishok’s men cage her, but they are hurried about it.  Isabela is good with bodies and locks.

She sticks and spits and loses them while they’re still pushing though Kirkwall’s docks, her teeth chipped and skin mixed up in blood and turn cloth under her nails.  She moves through the oiled, limp water while the half the crew are too busy holding the Tome of Koslun together to stop her, and the rest are left hamstrung in her wake.

She leaves the city dripping, grey sand chafing her calves as she cicles back to the Wounded Coast. The city shouts Hawke’s name, and sobs come out like a laugh as she remembers the slow creep of skin on the back of her neck as Hawke handed her over. Her own snarls and rage feel odd, now. Sounds from a stranger’s body.

Aveline, she remembers, as rain builds and her skin tries to decide between shivers and sweat, looked as pissed off as a cat in a bucket when the soldiers took her, if cats and their buckets were big as a tree.

Does that make sense? It doesn’t bloody matter. Escape matters. She should be squelching her way across land, not following the Waking Sea like it’s some promise, or a river, but she is _tired._ She hopes Aveline punched Hawke in the face.

“If I get the chance,” she says, laughing again as her voice croaks worse than grief or hangovers, “I am going to gut you, Hawke.”

Big words. Isabela sighs. At least Merrill wasn’t there. Didn’t see her dragged off and half a hope away from pleading. She still has cuts from Merrill’s window. Mad curls of red on her wrists and upper thighs. One on her neck.

_I liked that window._

  She stands, head thrown back, and keeps laughing.

_You’re coming back?_

“I’m so sorry, kitten.”

* * *

 

**9:37 Dragon - Antiva City**

Fair weather makes Antiva a closer friend than she ought to me, with Isabela scrabbling for passage under scraps of her name and her knives strapped close. Deckhand. Old hand. Sneak thief. Its messy and crowded and if she believed in wasted years, she’d let herself drown in bad wine at the White Crow.

Nah. There are better ways to go than dockside in a bucket of Rialto red.

She duels. Rudderless and angry, it’s the a way to make air move through her body, to keep her hands loose and others’ eyes on her with growing wonder as she nicks old legends and they buy her drinks for the pleasure of it. She listens out for Castillion’s name, stores coin for the day she hears it and has to bribe her way somewhere fast.

 She duels her way to rooms without bedbugs, and almost back to the sly, sleek sea captain self she liked best, in the years before Kirkwall.

She doesn’t hear a sweet bit about Hawke. That’s mostly good, but she wonders about Merrill. About Fenris and Varric and Anders, intent on eating himself up from the inside. She wonders about Sebastian. About _Aveline_ , of all people. Isabela doesn’t _do_ people—though that’s a phrase she can work wonders with, even in her own head—but they all stuck to her, somehow. Gits.

Loads of glass all over this place. Even the shitty parts. Seeing the world in mirror fragments makes her think of Merrill—the times she and Varric tried to tug her from that eluvian. The times Isabela came alone; laid a hand on the back of Merrill’s neck. The times Merrill turned under touch to look at her, blinking slowly as if she needed to put Isabela back together before she could smile.

Merrill still has her best deck of cards. Sweet thought, her friend’s fingertips grazing all those old, familiar edges. Aches a bit.

Isabela hopes she plays. Thinks of her when her whole body hurts from watching new boats edge into the harbour until she’s all anticipation with nowhere to go except back to the _White Crow_ , where heads can be smashed in and mouths kissed until the wanting shifts and changes inside her, into something loud and easy and gone in the morning.

* * *

Time is heavy and Isabela is ready to claw out of her own skin. Lucio calls her into the _White Crow_ with a long, landlordl-y sigh and a note in hand.

“Isabela,” he says. “You have to _stop_.”

“Stop what—and who pissed in your breakfast?”

He presses the note into her hand.

_“‘IF YOU’RE StiLL THE FASTEST BLADE IN LLOMERRYN’,_ she reads, _THEN I CHALLENGE YOU. TONIGHT.’_ –unsigned, so you can hardly scowl at me for inviting it, you know. I don’t know who they _are_.”

_And I haven’t used that name here._

_I need a drink._

“But they know you,” Lucio says. “And what am I going to do with this reputation? Keep mending the bar? You need to find your damn boat.”

 “I want the _right_ damned boat,” Isabela says. “And damnation’s pricey.”

The door swings open. Salt and saffron mix with refuse as the night air breaks through tapers and sweat and wine, all while sensation prickles along Isabela’s spine, right to the base of her skull.  

“Excuse me,” someone says. “I think a duelist lives here?”

Isabela turns.

She sees the staff first. Twisted wood that tricked the eye, moving from bone to branch between blinks and strung through with red. It stands taller than the woman who holds it, even in boots. And there _are_ boots—heart’s blood red and up to the knee, which wouldn’t be surprising at all except that’s _Merrill_ , with gold in her ears and one eyebrow, all the nerves on her face dissolving into slow relief.

“Oh good,” she says. “I found you.”

“Kitten?”

“It wasn’t hard,” Merrill says. “Not when I thought about it. Because you make stories, and if you weren’t dead than you were on a coast, and so I just had to pick the _right_ coast, you see?”

“I—“

“--Castillion’s _left_ Antiva, so it’ll take time for him to come back, since he’s got warehouses and murders and things, so I thought—and I’m babbling. Of course I’m babbling. You’re _here_.”

The staff falls to the floor and Isabela is caught in a hug that pushes them back against the bar, glasses crashing and patrons swearing (and laughing) while Lucio mutters something about rent. All while Merrill’s hands grip her back, lips pressed to her shoulder in a way that makes Isabela, for one breathless, ridiculous bit of a moment, curl around her and weep.

Merrill is the one who pulls away, eyes intent on her face. “I knew you’d escape,” she said. “I just had to work out how you’d run. Just wait till you see my ship, Isabela. Griffon, she’s called, and she’s _lovely_. _”_

“ _Your_ ship.”

A slow, sweet smile. “All mine.”

“Well,” Isabela breathes, reaching down to trace the small gold hoops that march all the way down one ear, fingers shaking. “Knock me on my arse and say you’re welcome, Merrill, this is…”

“Oh, I’m going to,” Merrill says. She raises her chin, taking another step back. “I was serious about that duel, you know.”

Isabela almost swallows her own tongue.

“That’s not—“ she manages. “You don’t—“

“There isn’t much I don’t do, actually,” Merrill says, picking up her staff. “Did that come out right? I don’t think it did.”

“You always come out right,” Isabela says, laughing now, her hands pressed to her thighs, nails digging in.

“Please, Isabela,” Merrill says. She’s sunburnt, even under candlelight. “I dare you.”

* * *

 

They do fight, a circle of White Crow patrons around them. They fight because they are _alive_ and in the same space and it is too big, too raw.

Isabela channels her wonder into movement and she remembers bandits on Sundermount; Silent Sisters on Lowtown streets. They tangled with her and they lunged at Hawke, but they can away from Merrill. She can feel why, now. Twin daggers on staff is a messy mix of bruised fingers and tiny cuts, reach pushing against speed.

The first Isabela cuts her, Merrill laughs.

“Not the best choice, ma vhenan,” she gasps, eyes narrowed and cheeks flushing when most people would go pale.”

They’re both grinning, even as Isabela’s knee gives out. Even as Merrill groans from an elbow to the kidey. They close. Lock. Pin each other’s arms. Legs tangle.

Isabela has a handful of her hair, her shirt, and Merrill reaches up, teeth closing on Isabela’s lower lip until they’re gasping—changing.

They kiss. Isabela’s world narrows to bodies, Merrill’s skin hot beneath her hand even as she licks out over the wounds she’s made, eyes outside-bright in the dim space.

“You’re _alive_ ,” Merrill whispers. “Alive. Alive. Alive.”

“You didn’t have to half kill me to find that out,” Isabela whispers back, lips closing on Merrill’s ear, tongue flicking a tiny circle that makes them both shudder. “Even if it _was_ fun.”

“”I needed you to see,” Merrill says.

“See what?” Isabela asks, taking careful steps away until they're only touching each other with heat and fingertips. 

“That I’d fight for you, silly.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry. Fenris is next.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fights, fears and a bloody rescue.

**The Eyes of Nocen – 9:37 Dragon**

They might be too late. There’s no need to say it, not with repairs and storms (bile-fear and creaking screams and Merrill will _not throw up_ ) and time crawling up her back. Merrill knows what it is like to be too late when you are only a day’s walk away.

 _(Keeper. What did you **do**_ **?** )

Sailing is shiftier than walking. Isabela takes the wheel most days. It distracts her, Merrill thinks. Keeps her from looking too closely at _Griffon_ and seeing the world of things she could change, if the ship was hers.

(“I don’t think I’m anyone’s first mate for long,” she’s said, smile rueful, the two of them tucked in against the wall, legs tangled together, Merrill’s arm going to sleep between their bodies.

“You didn’t have to stay,” Merrill whispers. “That wasn’t—I didn’t expect—“

“—you need to expect more, sometimes,” Isabela says.

“But not from you?” )

Merrill spends her days talking. Rigger Sam and Sam in the galley and hedgewitches from Antiva through to the edges of Rivain who swear they can capture weather in glass, so that all she need to is break it for a swifter wind, or a hard drag back into calm.  Her own magic starts to feel more like rope than veins. She looks at her own hands and sees the callouses that made Isabela proud approval through her want, the first time Merrill lets them drag over her skin.

(“I can feel where those hands have been, sweet thing.”)

She finds rumours of magisters the way she traced faults in glass. Concentrated fury that makes time slip and tea go cold, which is poor of her, because Sam does work very hard to heat it. But they might be too late, and Merrill dreams about drowning.

Splinters in her flesh and the deck splitting like the end of the world, water thick with churned sand and blood as rope snarls her ankles and her ribs cave in, her hand still holding tight to a body she cannot recognise, skin swollen and numb as her body presses—strains—breathes—

\--she wakes up silent and covered in sweat. When she walks out on deck, feeling water-beneath-wood-beneath-blood-beneath-skin, Isabela is the port railing with a crooked smile and moonlight catching on all her edges.

She moves before Merrill can touch her, reaching up into the rigging for the central mast and hauling herself up so that ropes groan and mutter like old men. Merrill follows, hands quick, the swaying movement like and unlike the trees she’s climbed as a child, reverberations from Isabela’s steps fizzing through her up to the elbows.

“No such thing as fear sweat up here,” Isabela says.

“That’s a bit silly, isn’t it?” Merrill moves higher, overtaking Isabela and laughing a little as the other woman reaches out to tug reproachfully on her belt. “What if you look down and think ‘oh dear, I am going to fall to my death?’ I know I did. All the time. For months.”

“And look at you now.”

“I don’t—I get so much _wrong_ , Isabela.”

Isabela scowls. “You’re not the one who handed Fenris over to slavers or said: ‘sure! Take the bitch, she’s caused me no end of trouble.’” A pause. “You also didn’t steal a big shiny religious text from big angry religious people to sell to Tevinter.”

“I—“

Isabela places a warm hand on her ankle. “—shut up, kitten.”

“ ** _No_.” **

Isabela blinks at her, but Merrill is tight-wound and shaking, forcing herself up a few more feet until there is more sky than rope in front of her. “No,” she says again. “I won’t shut up, and I am sick of people—trying—to—”

Merrill’s nose is dripping. There is salt in her mouth. “Don’t ever tell me to shut up, Isabela,” she manages, “But please put an arm around me so I don’t fall off? I haven’t—sleep is hard. This is all terribly…”

Isabela fits am arm around her, lips pressed to Merrill’s shoulder, hair snarled and falling down over both of them, tickling Merrill’s skin. They both, she thinks, need a wash. But her pulse is steady, and Merrill lets her eyes close, her body slump forward even as she keeps her grip in the rigging.

“I’m sorry, Isabela says.

“People always tell me to shut up,” Merrill says. “I’m tired of it. I’m _tired_.”

“Hawke didn’t deserve you,” Isabela mutters.

“Do you think she deserves any of us?”

“Your clan didn’t deserve you.”

Merrill winces through a laugh. “If they thought they did, I’m sure they’d be very frightened.”

Isabela’s groan vibrates through her body.

“Fenris might be dead,” Merrill whispers. “Everything _takes_ so long. That was the one good thing about Hawke, don’t you think? She sped things up.”

“We’re plenty fast, kitten,” Isabela says. “I’ll fight with you. I don’t—“

“—don’t what?” Merrill asks, straightening under Isabela’s hold, one curled-in part of her at a time.

“…want to leave you,” Isabela mumbles. And Merrill doesn’t even hear a _yet_.

* * *

 

Danarius’s people sail through the Eyes of Nocen in winter storms, and Merrill is ready for them. It’s the easiest way into Qarinus, and she does not need Isabela’s lazy, _people will always choose the easy way when they can, sweet thing_ , to know that it’s true.

“If they come, I need you to cut people,” she tells Isabela. “As many as you can. It doesn’t have to be deep.”

Isabela’s expression is unreadable when Merrill tells her this, rain dripping off her scarf and hair and into her boots, but she touches two fingers to her temple. Half a salute.

* * *

 

Fenris has not counted weeks. There is no calendar scratched into his skin, or one of the seeping walls in the berth Denarius turns into his prison. There is no point. He wakes up each day remembering the one before, and that means another day to lose when Denarius has land beneath his feet.

(“I’d do it here, little wolf,” he’s said, crouched in the tiny doorway, all scowl and clenched shoulders, careful vowels. “But you murdered my assistant.”)

He does not count. Should not think. He can still remember Hadriana’s words in his ears while her heart’s blood coating him up to the elbows, Hawke’s smile brilliant as she clapped him on the back and said that it was ghastly work, but he’d done well. The words had stung and warmed, and she’d tried to drink him under the table until there was no lyrium in his mouth.

“I hate this city,” she’d said, then. Her voice rough-warm and her fingers tight around her glass. “We shouldn’t have come.”

“You’ve helped people.” He’d said. He might have said. Perhaps he only thought it loudly, drunk on bad wine and old memories and ferocity, half sure that Handriana’s death had stuck fast under his skin along with the lyrium.

He remembers Hawke’s laughter.  Remembers Aveline, swallowing anxiety and bile after they’d spent a night in the docks, following cryptic notes and leaving bodies behind. Remembers Isabela, kicking and spitting as Hawke handed her over to the Arishok with a nod and steady look .

(“She deserved it, Fenris. She’s the one who came back into this mess and—“ she’d swallowed, looking away from him, back to the seething wreck of the Viscount’s chambers. “I am _tired_.“

“What if she had come back for you?” he’d asked.

Hawke groaned. “All _that_ proves is that you don’t magically learn about a person after you sleep with them. Isabela did not know me very well.”)

He remembers.

(“ _If you want him, he’s yours.”_

“Don’t do this, Hawke,” his own voice. His, but drifting. Untethered. Lost in other people’s air while his sister wrung her hands so hard that he heard knuckles crack, underneath Merrill’s low cry of anger and Hawke’s steady breathing.)

 He remembers Merrill moving though the old Hightown mansion _—his,_ through claim and blood and—it does not matter, now. She made no noises about dust or stains or torn curtains the way the others did. When she found a skeleton the old library, she only shrugged and used books about crop propagation and metalwork to prop it up straighter in it corner.

(“They live here, too. Doesn’t really matter if it’s gruesome, does it? Can you tell me what that spine label says?”)

He remembers the day he could.

He can fight. Not well, and not for long. He knows he has just surprise coiled up behind his slow-wasting body to cause gory injury. He rocks with the motion of the water beneath him, around him. Imagines the ship crumpling—of losing Denarius for five more days, five more minutes.

He is alone. There could be five minutes.

When splinters fly, he’s sure he’s imagining it. They bite his face. He raises his arms, ungauntleted and shaking, straining under rope, and more of the wood buries itself in his forearms, the backs of his hands.  There is ozone in his mouth, his skin splitting and stinging as lyrium flares from other people’s magery. He can taste Denarius’s fire and acid, another’s static numbs his lips and cries out, thick-tongued, even as he lets the lyrium shift inside him and he’s half bodiless, the fade dripping off him like sweat.

The ropes weren’t made to hold half a body. They fall away.

When the door opens, he’s movement and teeth, spinning his assailant and dribing an elbow into gaps in leather armor even as a knife scores his side and teeth close hard on his earlobe.

“Fenris. _Fenris._ Kill me later. After we’ve both had a bath. _Stop_.”

He swallows air. Chokes on it. “Isabela?”

“Was seeing if you needed any help getting untied, sweet thing.” she says, stepping back and wiping her bloody mouth with the back of her hand. “I asked Merrill specially.”

He coughs. “You’re not making sense.”

“Nothing new there, is there?”  Isabela grins at him, running quick and surprisingly perfunctory hands over his body, testing ribs and bruises, shaking her head over the narrow gash she’s made.

“You were—always—practical,” he says.

“Was that a joke, sweet thing?”

He groans. “I am… not sure.”

“Come on,” she says. She steps away from him, pulling one of her larger daggers and handing it over, hilt first. “Not your preferred, I know, but it’s better than bare hands. Even yours.”

“How many are there?” he asks. _Where did you come from? Why are you here?_

“There’s five of us,” Isabela says. Not including you. Or Merrill.”

“Then we shall all probably die.”

Isabela only laughs. A soft, warm laugh that tells him that tells him nothing, except that her time with Qunari had not, probably, been long.

 He is tense, waiting for Denarius’s crew or his mages every second step. There is nothing, just the water and their ragged breathing, and magic-gone-to-blood in his mouth.

Blood and pine needles.

(“Sorry if this hurts.” Merrill, breathless as she snares three raiders on the Wounded Coast, her eyes narrowed and her magic a sticky-strange mix on his skin. “Sometimes it looks like it hurts when people do magic near you and that must be frightfully inconvenient.”

“What do you care, abomination?”

“Oh, hush now.”)

He remembers, but the sight on deck is still dizzying.

Merrill, who has more gold in her ears than he’d ever seen her steal, stands at the centre of a crowd of bleeding, wide-eyed mages, all the ship’s rigging split and re-looped back around in ways that look like veins or tree roots, breaking skin. The blood from the cuts trickles over the rope.  Sails are tumbled about in forlorn heaps. There is, for some reason, a large black hat at Merrill’s feet. There is a daisy in the band.  Other strangers—two dwarves, on human, one elf, all of them armed—move at their backs. The human is limping. They are all smiling. Th shaky, loopy sort of smile that says you’re still alive and have no idea why.

Denarius is on the ground. Grey, and too still.

“I’m sorry I killed him,” she says, in the same sort of voice he remembers from weeks spent staring at the eluvian. “I don’t—“ she shudders. “I had to do it quickly, since he’s so— _was_ so very—“

Isabela moves away from him, fitting an arm around Merrill and wincing as the smaller woman’s shoulders hunched.

“Are you all right?” Merrill asks. “Probably a silly question, but we took so _long_ and—oh, elgar’nan, I’m talking a lot of rubbish, aren’t I?”  

Fenris swallows. “You,” he says, “Are yourself.”

Merrill smiles as if that makes sense.

“So,” she ventures. “You do know who I am, then. That’s lovely.”

“Denarius.” Fenris swallows. “He’s truly dead?”

“Oh, yes,” Merrill says. “Do you need to check?”

For some reason, that makes Isabela laugh. He hears it at a distance, his own steps too loud as he approaches the body, the women standing over it.

He reaches out. Ghosts fingers over Denarius’s neck. Stares at the dried blood around his mouth. His eyes. The long drips from his ears to the wooden planking.

“Bastard’s pretty dead, Fenris,” Isabela says.

“No pulse,” says Merrill. “I promise.”

She grimaces as he meets her eyes, an unhappy blush staining her face. “Not much blood, either.”

“What did you do?” he asks.

Merrill winces. “I _really_ don’t want to talk about it. I might. If you need me too, I mean. Just so long as it’s later. A lot later. These mages all need to get into the lifeboat and we need to get this ship back to _Griffon_ and it’s all going to be frightfully busy—“

“—Kitten,” Isabela says. “This is where you order your first mate to do all the grunt work and she glowers and takes it all out on the hides of your o so worthy sailors.”

“Is it?” Merrill blinks. She is, Fenris sees, trying not to shake.

“Is your pretty net going to keep everyone still if you’re not looking at it?” Isabela asks.

“Yes,” Merrill says, voice thick.  “Everything’s anchored, everything’s— _oh.”_

Isabela hooks one arm through his own, the other through Merrill’s. She leads them away from the blood and the bodies, until they’re all pressed into the ship’s remaining unbroken rail, water spattering their faces.

“Stop thinking,” Isabela says, pulling free. “It’s good for you.”

Soon, she’s shouting orders the deck vibrates from other people’s steps. Merrill is slumped against Fenris’s shoulder and he does not pull away.

Fenris counts. The world unspools, second by second. 

He has more than five minutes. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirkwall is a mess. There is a reckoning. Fenris makes a fine navigator and Isabela is yet to find the perfect hat. Merrill wonders about wonder. And salt. It's a been a long few years.

**_9:37 Kirkwall_ **

“This,” Isabela says, “Isn’t a good idea.”

The Kirkwall docks close around Merrill’s ship, slicked with oil and thick with trash. Old rope. Broken bottles. The dense, grey-green rot smell of harbor vegetation and too much sun. She follows rope over the side, and Merrill lets herself marvel as muscles bunch in her shoulders and back, the quickness of her hands as she ties _Griffon_ with the help of Sam-the-deckhand and shipwright Sam, along with Casavir from Orlais. Very long sort of boy, that one. Someone who’ll follow when Isabela claims a ship of her own.

“You _like_ bad ideas, Isabela,” she calls.

“She has a point.”

Merrill smiles at the sight of Fenris, all scowl and shirtsleeves (ship life is too wet for gauntlets, especially grand ones.) His hands, nicked and naked and nearly familiar, are steady  at the wheel as Isabela tugs and guides and shakes her head at them both.  He catches her looking; turns his head so his answering smile is sidelong and deniable, if anyone asks about it later.

When the chantry explodes, it’s a ripple in thick water. Sulphur in their eyes and their mouths and sound dragged out long.

* * *

Hawke fights the Templars with Anders’ blood in her mouth. It’s funny, in a horrible sort of way. As if she’s swallowed a little of her lover down, along with all the bile and just a tiny bit of Justice. Disgusting and appropriate with plaster and grit under her nails and the chantry explosion ringing in her ears.

She was quick. She made it quick. A caught breath and seizing muscle, her eyes on his face. She’s pushed the sad, wrecked part of her that wanted it done with his back to her down with the rest of the day’s acid.

He died and she fights, eyes streaming and stuck with grease and smoke and with one less knife than she needs.

(“ _I’m sick of mages and Templars.”_ )

Varric’s words. Hawke wants to kill him more than she doesn’t, but—

(no, not that word. Not when she can still feel muscles tensing under her hand and _I’m glad it’s you_ and—and—and—)

—Hawke is sick of mages and Templars.

She finds Bethany in the Gallows Courtyard. Her sister’s hair is singed, her posture straight as their mother’s: tall, and broader than feels right in Hawke’s mind, where twins still grab at her hands and call her Mari. Big sister. Bully. Help.

_(“Marian, help! Bethy won’t stop sparking me!”_

_“You did tie her braid to the bed, Carver.”_

_“It’s not fair.”_

_“What’s ‘fair’, little brother?”_

_“Ugh. Shut up.”)_

Hawke pushes her way through anxious mages, robes ripping when she steps on them. Orsino catches at her, but  falls away when Bethany steps forward. She grips Hawke with hot, rough hands. Tiny hairs raise on the back of Hawke’s neck. Her teeth ache from static.

“Hawke,” Orsino says. He’s standing at her back, too regal to hover, and Hawke snarls.

“In a _minute_.”

“Sorry, First Enchanter,” Bethany says. Her voice is as worn and scraped as her touch, as if she’s screamed right along with the frightened, clamorous rest of them. She curves around Hawke, presses chapped lips to the top of her head.

“Stop being tall,” Hawke mumbles. 

“Stop being a git.”

They break apart, Hawke’s hands tight around Bethany’s forearms, Varric looking at the pair of them as if he wishes he had a pen.

“That, sunshine,” he says, “Is a bit of an ask.”

Pain cracks up through her jaw. “Shut up, Varric.” 

Bethany sighs. “Thank you,” she says. “I didn’t think—“

“—what?” Hawke sighs. “That I wouldn’t fight for you?”

“Well—“

_Ungrateful shit._

“Well?”

Hawke watches her sister’s throat work.

“It doesn’t matter,” Bethany says. “But…where is everyone?”

Hawke does not need to look at Varric to know he’s smiling. The ‘everything-is-shit-and-you’ve-all-just-noticed’ rueful twist of useless that makes her want to scream. She is sick of knowing him. Sick of the city close about her, of her own smell and the oil he uses on Bianca. The silent judgement of the no-longer-there.

She looks at her sister and sees their mother. Sees Carver, his disapproval in Bethany’s mouth, his eyes in a broken window pane behind them. The mages mill about her, frightened and angry and unfocussed.

She is tired.

“Just us, sunshine,” Varric says. “But we can do a _lot_ of damage.”

“You’ve lost _all_ of them?” Bethany’s voice, already strangled, frays into something high and tight. “Even Aveline? And is Anders…?”

Templars push into the courtyard before Hawke has answer. They clank. They scream. They are, Hawke thinks, as she feels Bethany tense at her back, magic pushing Hawke and Varric forward in a crackling wave that makes her skin crawl, almost welcome. She bares her teeth and her hand closes around the worn, still-damp leather of a dagger hilt.

She needs something to hit.

* * *

 “This far and no farther, Champion.”

Aveline wants to thump the Templar commander. The man is all armor in place of a spine, keeping well back from Hawke’s attacks even as he throws others into them. 

Aveline’s ears ring. She’s struck. A bell sound, high and heavy. She should be on fire duty. She could haul stone. Half the Darktown tunnels collapsed. She’s queasy at the thought. Twenty guards at her back, and Brennan has a head for logistics.  Donnic is there, too. Dependable, even if she never got her words right.

 _That_ thought is no good in front of Hawke and fear and too many bodies. 

 “Guard Captain,” the boy demands. “You will order your men to attack in support.”

The twelve women in the phalanx have too many other bloody things to wince about. Hawke looks at them all with bloodshot eyes. Varric can’t slump, not with Bianca, but she’s half sure she hears him sigh.

“Do you hear me?”

The Templar’s voice quavers. Hard to think he’s the same sort as Wesley.

Foolish thought.

Hawke raises her chin. Aveline watches her.

“I didn’t want it to come to this, Hawke,” she says. She hopes her words are stronger than they feel in her mouth. “You didn’t have to be here.”

“Don’t I?”  

“You once saved me,” Aveline says. She keeps locked on Hawke’s. They’re acid bright against all that red and the braising.  Aveline remembers the demon splitting Ander’s skin. She sees the same blue now.

“I owe you a life,” she says, as Hawke’s mouth tightens, as she sees Isabela’s disbelief in one clenched fist, her own horror at Fenris’s fate in one small, backwards step. “This is the cost. Whatever you do, whatever you come, whatever cause you claim or deny—“

—Varric is sighing, She’s half sure she can see Hawke forming words. _You can’t_ — _Don’t you—_

“You are,” Aveline says, “ _Nothing_ to me.”

Saddest part? she thinks, while Varric winces and all expression leaks of Hawke’s face, is that it’s almost true.

The stripling commander clears his throat.  “Guardsmen,” he says, in a way that makes it damn hard not to meet Brennan’s eyes and start kicking things. “You will attack on my order.”

 _Not on your life. Or mine._ Aveline raises her blade. Lowers it. She doesn’t look back as she walks away from Hawke. The company follows in silence. Steady. There’s no guilt. Too many bloody fires for that.

They have work to do.

* * *

 _This one looks interesting_. That’s what he’d thought, seeing Hawke smash her way through Meeran’s ranks. _I like interesting_.

That was six years, two surprisingly well-published serials and three broken ribs ago. Varric is up to his ears in interesting, so long as interesting is entrails and _sweet mother of all_ he’s been hit in the head. He’s not sure if his heartbeats are shouts or if they’re even inside his body any more, only that Bethany’s grown into a downright unsettling version of herself as she throws lightening at living statuary.

Living. Statuary. And he has arrows. Hawke has knives and anger. He’s used to betting on that anger, but right now? All odds are on Sunshine.

Hawke isn’t stupid. She ducks and rolls and deals with anyone who has flesh to cut, leaving room for Bethany’s strikes while he covers both their backs.

They’ll make it, he thinks. They shouldn’t, but they will, because of rage and good aim and the look in Hawke’s eyes that makes him ache a bit, because he knows how to read her.

Bartrand used to thump him about that. His surfacer little brother who always read stuff to the end, even when it was pointless or boring or he didn’t like any of the damn words.

* * *

Anders’s blood is in her mouth and there is no one left to fight. They’re meant to run, she knows. Molten metal has eaten through half the armour on her left side. Skin splits and pulls. Bethany is helping her over barrels and down into the docks as if they’ve time, but Kirkwall is broken. There are too many holes in the ground. She’s half sure Meredith is going to break out of all that madness and rock just out of spite, and Maker only knows if she’d already sent word about the Chantry.

The _chantry_ sent word about the chantry.

“Ship back to Gwaren,” Bethany says. “Then Rivain. _That’s_ far, and magic is—“

“—I don’t care,” Hawke says.  There’s lyrium in her mouth, somehow. The taste sweet and thick, coating her teeth and making skin creep at the back of her neck. Some remnant of Meredith, she thinks. Unless Bethany is leaking. “I really don’t—“

\--silence. Pain makes its own silence, when it’s bad enough. And there is a hand around her heart.

* * *

“Hawke.”

Fenris doesn’t think. Cannot, when he sees her, half stumbling toward Merrill’s _Griffon_ like she’s seen the end of the world.  His own world is already tilted, weeks on water turning the docks into a shifting, uncertain thing, even without Hawke in it.

He phases. Pushes against air and Fade and his own skin until he’s unravelled and space gets eaten up in three steps. Merrill shouts and Isabela is half saying _kitten_ and half saying _kill_ and Hawke is staring at him, surprise lost in anger and pain as he feels her muscles spasm around his closed fist. Her heart is rabbit-fast. The same as any other.

_Don’t do this._

His words, not hers. He _wants_ words. That is the worst part. She goes grey around him, teeth sunk into her lower lip.  She says nothing. Varric is stuck on a “You don’t—“  and Bethany, alive and battered and stronger than he remembers, hurls lightening at him that his markings—searing and living as they are in the awful middle of this—drink like water. His bones hurt.

_Don’t do this._

“Painful, Hawke?”

Isabela is here, winded and triumphant, though she keeps half an eye on the lightening. She’s circling. He can smell her. It’s peculiarly comforting, Hawke wets her lips.

“You know—“ she whispers. “If you’d—shown as much initiative—with me as---you did---escaping then—I’d have—fought harder---to keep you both.”

“Oh, I _will_ hamstring you,” Isabela mutters, cursing as Bethany shifts her focus to the other woman.  “I—Bethany, please don’t kill me, sweetness. It’s nothing personal. Well. It is, but you don’t—“

“— _Stop it_ , both of you,” Bethany says. “What are you doing here anyway, Hawke said—“

“—I cannot imagine what she said,” Fenris manages.

More magic. Bethany’s astringency is smothered by blood and pine needles and Fernis looks down to see a small, nail bitten hand close about his wrist, not quite touching the point where Hawke’s body meets it.

If Hawke’s heart beats any faster she _will_ die, words or no words.  He needs words, but they’re choking him, and his body does not want to be here. He’s loose. Frayed. Shuddering at the wrongness of extended contact, a life his hand that he _does not want_ , even as old memories of laughter mix with Hawke’s small shrug when Denarius came to claim him.

Merrill squeezes.

* * *

“This,” Merrill says, “Is awful. And it can’t be good for you, Fenris, staying like that for what, how long is it now? Five minutes? You were so very fast. It took a long time to catch up.”

Hawke’s eyes are wide. Tears are dripping off her nose. She’s shaking. Her mouth moves.

“I’m sorry.” Merrill leans forward. She’ll apologise to Fenris later. Not for stopping him—she _hopes_ she can stop him, and certainly isn’t going to apologise for it—but for invading his space. “Did you say something?” 

“…Shut _up_ , Merrill.”

Perhaps it would have been better not to get off the boat. Simpler, certainly. She’s almost used to simple things, nowadays. Isabela wants to raiding. And no, that’s not simple at all, or at least not as simple as Isabela makes it sound, but it would be simpler than this. And maybe she wouldn’t want to count in her own head. Or scream.

“Do you think that’s a good thing to say to me, right now?” Merrill sats. “You’re really quite odd.”

Hawke’s shoulders are shaking. Is she laughing? Isabela kicks her in the ankle and it’s hard to mind. 

“You were running toward my ship.” Merrill says. “You see her there? _Griffon_. She’s lovely, isn’t she?”

Hawke swallows. Fenris makes a small, tired sound next to her, his pulse a rapid mess under her fingertips. There’s enough lyrium leaking out of him to make anyone silly. Blood is sensible. 

“Take—Bethany,” Hawke says. “Not safe. Anders—“ she coughs. Cries out. “There’s a mess.”

“There’s always a mess,” Varric says. It’s good to see him again, even drawn and sad. “Fenris, stop—“

“—Why should he stop?” Isabela snaps. “After everything she’s done? The Qunari would be slower. And Denarius…” she grimaces. “This is _nothing.”_

“To you, perhaps,” Fenris says. Merrill can feel the bones in his am move as fingers twitch. He pulls back, slowly, and Hawke drops to her knees, gasping.

“I do not want to touch you,” Fenris says. “Your death is—“ he pauses, sighing. “It is worthless. I should not be surprised.”

“ _Charmed,”_ Hawke coughs. She shrugs away from Bethany’s touch when the mage crouches down to set an arm around her. Looks up at them all with wild eyes that show too much white.

“I’ll take Bethany,” Merrill says. “Of course I will. And Varric, if he wants. But not you, Hawke.”

If she did, she’d have a mutiny, and she hasn’t practised for a mutiny. The mess would be horrible.  

“Good,” Hawke says. “Am I supposed to be grateful?”

Merrill sighs. “Yes, actually. That would have been rather nice.”

* * *

 There is salt in her mouth. The clean kind, no fear or old bodies in it. Not the kind used in too much of the food. Merrill has never really wondered about salt, but there’s a _lot_ of it. There’s a lot of most things that you can wonder about. Wonder bleeds into wonder.

Some days, Merrill does not leave her house. But now, her house leaves for her, the water shattering light like glass and going on forever until she’s half silly staring at it, the wood of the deck warm under her feet and easier to clean than her old home, now she’s got the knack of it. Ships are strange cities. Crowded-close, and taking on the smells and fears and strengths of everyone living in them.

Fenris is still here. There’d been something startled and _staying_ in his smile the first time she handed over charts and maps.

(“I know how well you read,” she’d said, _lethallin_ slipping out far too easily for sense, though he only bristled a little. “ _And_ you don’t get lost.”)  

Isabela is leaving. They both know it. Each port looks a little more interesting than the last, and one of them will sell the right sort of hat, but now they’re kissing and she knows exactly how much pressure Isabela’s lower lip needs before she makes that low, base-of-the-throat noise and wonder bleeds into wonder.

“You,” Isabela says, “Are thinking too much.”

“They’re good thoughts.”

Isabela pouts, but her eyes are crinkling at the corners and she’s keeping their arms twined, their heads close together so that her words are felt more than heard. “They’d better be.”

“ _Wanting_ thoughts,” Merrill says. “I’m better at those now, ma vhenan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking with me this far. I hope you enjoyed reading this world as much as I did writing it.


End file.
